As a Maine resident, I write in opposition to the late-term abortion bill, L.D. 1619.

The bill would allow abortion at any time in pregnancy, even until birth (even though Maine’s current law already allows abortion past the age of viability), with a qualified medical professional’s approval. It would also decriminalize abortions done by someone other than a licensed physician.

L.D. 1619’s passage would take Maine far beyond the line of conscience. What the bill is telling us isn’t that women can safely receive medical attention in life-threatening situations — current Maine law already allows this — but that infant lives don’t matter.

It’s telling us the state should decide when life starts and when life ends; that undesired human lives can be discarded with no repercussions, simply on the basis of inconvenience and the whims of a fallible society.

What happens when we give the government the power to decide which lives have worth? Slavery. The Holocaust. Eugenics. Abortion. In all these scenarios, those murdering or abusing the “undesirables” were fully justified in their own minds.

If we pass L.D. 1619, what will be the next “inconvenient” people group targeted “for the benefit of society”? The elderly? The disabled? The mentally ill?

L.D.1619 would open the door to endless possibilities of governmental and societal abuse toward those who can’t stand up for themselves.

We, as living human beings with free will and a voice, must speak up for those who can’t speak up for themselves and stop this bill in its tracks.

Ceana Robinson, East Andover